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There was a time when the office stayed at the office. The door was closed, the light was switched off and, with more or less success, one came home to be something else: partner, father or mother, friend. For many who today hold positions of responsibility, that border has been erased. Work no longer stays at work: it comes home in the body, in one’s mood, in the head still in the meeting while the body is at the table.

Coming home without arriving whole

One can be at home and not be there. The phone one does not put down, the worry that does not switch off, the family conversation half-followed because a part remained trapped in a problem from the day. The family, then, receives the tired, distracted version, what is left over after work took the best. And that half-presence, over time, is noticed and it hurts.

The tension that seeps through

The instability up above does not stay up above. A period of conflict, of uncertainty or of overload at work seeps into the home through small cracks: the patience that grows shorter, the irritability with one’s partner, the disproportionate reaction to something minor from the children. Many domestic arguments are not, deep down, about what they appear to be; they are the day’s tension looking for a way out. The cost at work ends up sending an emotional bill.

When the post devours everything

Behind this there is usually something more silent: the work role that gradually colonizes the whole person. One leads so well and for so long that, without realizing it, one begins to lead at home too —to solve, to assess, to control— when what is needed there is something else: to be present, to listen, to loosen up. It is hard to take off the uniform of command; sometimes one no longer knows who one is when one is not at the head of something.

Recovering a place of one’s own

Therapeutic work does not come to tell anyone to work less, nor to regulate family life; there are other spaces for that. It comes to look at something more personal: what one carries, why it is so hard to set it down, what would have to happen in order to come home and, truly, arrive. It is a place to leave behind the investiture of the post so that it does not end up invading everything. It is neither quick nor is there a formula —it would be dishonest to offer one—, but it allows one to gradually recover a border that had been lost.

That work gets into the home is not a flaw of character nor a lack of love for one’s own; it is what happens when a demanding role finds nowhere to rest. Being able to think about it —and to set it a limit— takes nothing away from the professional. It gives back, instead, something that had been quietly dissolving: the possibility of inhabiting one’s own home as a person, and not as an extension of the office.

An essay by Carlos Hernán Arango Botero, psychologist. If these lines resonated with you and you occupy a place of decision or of high performance, you can learn about the accompaniment and take the first step in an initial interview.